Tag: Sara Wright

8 August 2017: One thing I’m discovering from republishing these fifteen-year-old instalments of She Is Still Burning: it’s the individual writer’s intensity, clarity of thought, attention to detail, that make a piece worth reading more than once. When they wrote it, and under what circumstances, matters much less.

I may be a little slow in coming to this realization—I think the rest of the world calls these things-worth-rereading “Literature.”

SHE IS STILL BURNINGAn Expanding Reader To Encourage Life LoversInstallment # 1201 March 2002

“When my mornin’ comes aroundFrom a new cup I’ll be drinkin’And for once I won’t be thinkin’There’s something wrong with me” – Iris Dement

Dear Friends,

Scientists have recently determined that the colour of space is turquoise. For reasons unclear to me, I was delighted with this announcement. And here’s another: last July, astronomers discovered a previously unknown planet on the edge of our solar system, eccentrically orbiting between and beyond Neptune and Pluto. The planet has not yet been named by an official committee of the International Astronomical Union (it’s currently referred to as “2001 KX76”), but the union will accept naming suggestions from anyone. Suzanne Cox submitted the name of the ancient Chinese goddess Nu Kua (because, after the universal holocaust, she repaired and restored the shattered columns that hold up heaven; she patched the torn heavens together, making the world whole again). I have kept wishing that something would repair the human-made hole in the ozone layer, so invoking Nu Kua by naming a newly discovered planet after her seems to me just the ticket. Why wait for an official committee to be similarly persuaded? Let’s all welcome Nu Kua to the planetary family, and hope she can do what she did before.

Invoking goddesses, ancient or otherwise, makes me feel slightly foolish, but I’ve reached the limits of patience with all these fundamentalist Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, etcetera-etcetera who monopolize the naming of the mysterious, who, in effect, colonize the invisible. At the moment of their triumph, their time—as far as I’m concerned— is up. We will henceforth create our own religions, thank you very much. Based on kindness toward life forms (a novel idea when applied to the political/economic/military sphere).

Truth to tell, the political/economic/military sphere has become so lunatic that I’m finding it nearly impossible to write about clearly. Last night, Bert and I were watching a video of the film “Illuminata,” and we both latched onto the line, “In the name of all that is real, I’m going [away].” My sentiments exactly, but go away where? I used to relieve my frustrations by writing scathing commentary about Bush & Co., but, frankly, that doesn’t work anymore. How, for example, does one parody an “axis of evil” state-of-the-union address that is already a parody of itself?

Two days ago, on the excellent Montreal-based website Centre for Research on Globalisation, I ran onto the alarmingly titled article by John Stanton and Wayne Madsen “The Emergence of the Fascist American Theocratic State”. It has the virtue of compiling events from November 2000 through February 2002 into a coherent story, as told by future historians relating the demise of democracy in the U.S. The problem with the article is I couldn’t come up with much in the way of counter-arguments; the authors make too much sense. But read it for yourself, please, and let me know what you believe they may be exaggerating or omitting.

The question of what exactly the U.S. government has become in the last fifteen months seems to me crucial for those outside as well as inside its borders, since this is a state apparatus which has planted military bases throughout the world and which dominates the world economy, tracks global communications, and so forth. We need to know what’s being decided behind closed doors in Washington (as well as in those two fortified underground locations where the Associated Press today reports that a “shadow government” has been operating since “the first hours after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks”), and CNN isn’t telling us. So it’s a matter of putting together the scattered pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, seeing the picture that emerges.

Gertrude Stein reportedly once remarked that when there’s everything to fear, there is nothing to fear. Which makes a kind of psychological sense. When there is no security (no privacy either), what do we do? We do what it pleases us to do, simply that.

I am writing in response to the last issue (#11) of She Is Still Burning, but also because I want you to know how much I have appreciated your sending me each previous installment. … You’ll be pleased perhaps to know that a couple of the feathers you sent me ended up as part of a mask I created this fall called Shapeshifter, the Blue Voice ofthe Forest. I have been consistently moved by these ornithological offerings and wanted you to know …

I am hoping that your cat Pookie is mending still … I have special empathy for those of us whose relationships include non-humans …

In installment #11, I hungrily devoured those parallel letters that Lise and you wrote. You are so right—one certainly does illuminate the other. I don’t think I realized how truly isolated I have been here in this small mountain community, or how starved I have been for words from others of like mind. I do know how depressed I’ve felt. I also know that as a result of reading and re-reading those two letters I have made a decision to investigate the possibility of hooking up to the internet to help me tap into a couple of web sites (the ones you suggested) that might help to relieve my sense of isolation. This is a drastic step for one who dislikes machine chatter as much as I do.

After re-reading installment #11 one more time this morning, I also wrote a poem that is a first attempt to articulate my own distress, instead of giving into what has become pervasive fear and a terrifying sense of powerlessness. Most frightening is the realization that these powerful feelings have been present on some level just below the threshold of my own consciousness since the events of September 11th first occurred. My initial response to the bombing was one of rage towards the American people for believing that Americans could go on destroying human lives everywhere on earth but in this country without ever having to take the consequences. When I walked in the woods that first night, I wept with the trees.

Don’t for god’s sake feel you need to publish this poem. I’m sending it to show you that your words have moved me, and helped one person to break a silence too dangerous for words.

THE AMERICAN MASK

I am a woman without a countryRepelled by the iconic ribbons plastered on store windows—That flap wildly from the phallic poles of speeding cars.What new monstrosity does this American mask hideBehind its horizontal slashes?Beneath its two faced feigned unity?I am a woman without a country.How can I survive the paradox?Living as a creature whose love for this landCrosses every known boundary artificially created by man?I am a woman without a countryLiving on the threshold of a culture killing WildernessWho feels the Earth’s pulse drumming softly but persistently—The song of the Universe pushing up from her feet.

What will become of this land and its woman

who keens with dark tree roots tangled in her hair

if her senses keep numbing

if her voice becomes mute?

It might interest you to know that on the morning of September 11th I was in the process of painting a watercolor called The Acorn Story when I suddenly felt compelled to paint a fiery orange sky on the left hand side. It was later that day that I received the news that the bombing had occurred. Instantly, I recalled my orange sky, understanding that I had inadvertently tapped into the collective without realizing it.

On the day we began to bomb Afghanistan I was attending a retreat and had just returned from a silent walk up Spruce Mountain when I had a very peculiar thought: namely that death and creativity were on the same edge. Feeling upset and curiously unsettled, I went into a quiet room and wrote the following poem without understanding the source of its imagery. It was noon on 10/7/01.

THE VOICE OF THE FOREST

Tree Womanwinds her wayaround the bark.Up and downspiraling in both directions,engraving her life in wormwoodBreathing tearful tree prayers.

A solitary presencethe barred owl takes flight,her wide eyed vision piercing illusion.Soaring on silent wingsshe slices through the deeply troubled sky—Marking this threshold passageAs her ownCrossing over into other worlds.

On a lighter note I am feeding the deer and wait with childlike anticipation for their arrival each night.

Blessings, Harriet, and warmest regards —Sara (Wright)

LETTER FROM ARIANE BRUNET, 22 JANUARY 2002

[note: Ariane Brunet and I met by serendipitous accident on my first trip to Montreal, in 1984. Later, we were both part of a group that founded the women’s bookstore L’Essentielle in Montreal and began organizing for the 1988 Third International Feminist Bookfair. And much water under the bridge later, Ariane began working for the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development, where she now coordinates their Women’s Rights Programme. The following letter is excerpted from correspondence between us when we reconnected, again by serendipitous accident, over the internet this past winter.]

Ah! I can only agree! You have no idea how good it feels to read you and to link with my literary radical friends! Good for the soul.

There is so much I would need to say about the human rights field … how women have learned to use it, but also how States have learned to use human rights as a post-colonial ideology. Yet my friends in Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia, Congo, Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, Columbia, Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia, etc. need to use the mechanisms that enable them to shame their country into changing a policy, acknowledging a violation from time to time. It doesn’t always work, of course, especially since Northern governments have used rights as a way to escape their own responsibility in the socio-economic domain. Yet, more aware then ever of the double-edged sword it has become, I keep trying to use this framework to make a dent here and there with other activists.

Right now, we would very much like to:

1) ensure that impunity for violence against women in war be a thing of the past (so we work on the International Criminal Court and the International War Crimes Tribunal for Rwanda and Ex-Yugoslavia; and develop strategies to engage Japan to apologize for the sexual military slavery of the 30s and 40s in Asia Pacific and, more importantly, to take legal responsibility for what they did to “comfort women”;

2) contribute to the work of Sima Samar and activists of Pakistan and Afghanistan to integrate women’s rights in the new constitution of Afghanistan;

3) establish an informal network of women activists to analyze the policies at the root of fundamentalism, be it Catholic, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu or Buddhist, nationalistic or cultural;

4) create an international coalition so Congolese women have a chance to sit at the peace negotiation table.

I write this, and on a good day I say to myself … yeah maybe we can get some of this done. Other days I feel we are fools. But fools are much needed these days. … Southern activists have certainly given me more than I will ever be able to express: their resolve, their endurance, their clear mind, political savvy, sense of humour, sense of joy, the way they share their vision …

Well, Harriet, reading all of your SISB made me realize that the writing women’s world also does that, and that I needed to get in touch again with that world as well. Sharing poems, reflections, ways of observing the world, transforming into quiet thoughts the noises of the world, is also essential in order to keep faith. So thank you, Harriet, for doing that. …

Amelia [Ariane’s cat] died two years ago after 23 years of life, 14 of which she lived with three legs. In fact, she used her tail as a rudder and could keep balance turning corners, running like no one else! So if cancer does not pursue its ravages, Pookie [Harriet and Bert’s cat, who recently had a leg amputated] will join the incredible agile ones!

love to you and a nice allo to your loved ones!Ariane (Brunet)

LIKE AN EGG

I crack my car openshatter glazed windows, smasha mounded roof, set loose a buried hoodrediscover and unblind headlights,all the while caught betweenfragility and imminent destruction,as if I needed to be remindedhow thintheline,

the same as when I take pen to paper,stubborn, no matter what goes down,what computer winks out.Gloved or huddled by candlelightmakes no difference, my soulinsists on release.

Emily, I can understand whyyou sewedthosebooks together,wrote the desired againstthe freezing night. If that’s insanityI choose it over pretense, voices insistingthere’s nothing new under the sun.

If I have to crack cars opento get where I’m going,wear crampons to grip the ground,don a hard hat as trees come downit’s no different than trying to shapethis poem, walk it firmto meet the dawn of any new beginning.

SHE IS STILL BURNING An Expanding Reader To Encourage Life LoversInstallment #530 January 2001

“Reality is the leading cause of stress among those who are in touch with it.”
– Jane Wagner

Dear Friends,

Now that the long-planned blitzkrieg of repression has been unleashed in the States, my heart begins thump-thumping like that of an old war horse abruptly called back to the front.

a) Protestors at Bush’s inauguration, holding signs reading “Hail to the Thief,” are beaten bloody. O familiar scene, if you remember being part of protests against segregation, the Vietnam war, the bombing of Cambodia.

b) Bush and crew begin work day #1 by falling to their knees to petition the guidance of an Old Testament war god. And yes, indeed, there’s a ready-to-hand four-syllable name in the English language for this sort of behaviour: “pa-tri-ar-chy.” (Did you know that in the archeological remains of non-patriarchal cultures, there exists no image of a human, male or female, worshipping on their knees?)

c) Bush continues his first day in the White House by cutting off funds for international aid agencies offering women abortion counselling. A bizarre political move? Not if you recall feminist analyses of the last 5000 years or so of human history.

The bad news is coming in fast and furious. Its rapidity brings to mind other seizures of state power by “crazy” and/or “stupid” patriarchal hardliners—the Taliban, for example (comment heard on Radio-Netherlands, 28 January 2001, regarding Bush’s cutting of funds for abortion counselling: “This is a U.S. version of the Taliban”), or the Nazis. Hitler came to power in a tainted democratic election, intimidating voters with his gang of thugs known as the Brown Shirts. Bush achieved the same end through non-violent use of the judicial system, which may indicate how much more refined state and corporate control have become in the last eighty years (we were already living under a “soft fascism”?). Hitler’s electoral victory would not have meant much without the backing of German industrialists—and this he had, since they were promised the contracts to build his war machine. Bush has the backing of US-based multinationals, for similar reasons. (The Bush campaign was awash in Big Money, with computer-industry magnates, led by Bill Gates, making especially hefty contributions.) Finally, even with election-victory respectability and big-capitalist support, Hitler still needed individual Germans in positions of authority and responsibility throughout the society to decide, “Hey, we’ve got to go along with this guy now; we have too much to lose.” Most apparently did decide to accept the new situation, thereby normalizing it.

It took years for the “new situation” in 1930s Germany to radically alter and/or prematurely end the lives of most of earth’s people. But the USA in 2001 is already the world’s dominant economic and military power, and the current speed of communications and transport is lightning-fast compared to what it was before World War II; consequently, the global repercussions of anything Bush does are immediate. The global repercussions of every single act of resistance to Bush & Company are also immediate—even if less visible, owing to corporate control of mass communications.

Under these circumstances, it’s wondrous luck to have a free-speech vehicle already on the road—especially one that’s small, fast and maneuverable (like an Arabian horse, I hope). She Is Still Burning arrived on time; now may she arrive on target.

•”The Light of the Deer” by Sara Wright (a recounting of personal experience in which Cherokee myth takes on new life in the Maine woods)
•”A Wing in the Crevice” by Ann Stokes (a mysteriously moving renewal/rebirth poem that resonates on many levels—appropriate for the times)
•”She Is Still Burning” Meets “RadVictorian Radio” (with e-mail correspondence from Barbara Mor)

THE LIGHT OF THE DEER by Sara Wright, Autumn 2000

From out of the mountain he comes
With his head held high in the wind
Like the spirit of light he comes
The little white chief of the deer …

One blue and gold morning a few weeks ago this poem came involuntarily to my mind, as I was thinking about bears. Bear killing season was underway. I was humming a little song I had put to the words as I walked, and remembering the first time I used them eight years ago to invoke the spirit of Awi Usdi.

In the Cherokee myth this mystical white deer is called out of the mountain by the animals who are being slaughtered to species extinction by hunters. Awi Usdi is the justice maker and spirit of reverence who incarnates as this small deer. When the animals tell him about their fears of being wiped out by men, he assures them that justice will prevail. First he will visit the hunters in dreams and tell them that they must stop killing more animals than they need. They must use prayer to ask for permission to take an animal life, and then give thanks for the gift of each animal life given. Then Awi Usdi warns the hunters that if they do not curb their greed and continue to kill without reverence, he will cripple the hunters, making it impossible for them to ever hunt again. Most men listened, but some thought that their dreams were stupid and refused to stop killing. Awi Usdi put an end to their slaughter as he had promised the animals he would, and balance and harmony between animals and humans was restored once more.

This myth came instantly alive for me the first time I read it in Caduto/Bruchac’s Keepersof the Earth in 1993. I had just moved to the mountains and the continuous slaughter of so many animals left me stunned beyond comprehension and without resources to fight back. Everyone I talked to seemed hungry for the hunt. I didn’t know which was most revolting: the arrogance of the men, or the women who supported the right of these men to kill whatever crossed their paths. Either way both rationalized that often this meat was actually eaten. When I would mention that no one ate beaver these days, the women would frequently excuse the hunters’ disgusting behavior by saying that their men had to do “the man thing.” What’s behind this statement is one of the hidden truths of patriarchy, namely that many men just like to kill. I wonder now how I missed it. Hunting bears, beavers, minks, otters, deer, rabbits, moose, squirrels and anything else that was unfortunate enough to cross the human path in or out of “season” was accepted as normal, and I think it was this attitude of normalcy that frightened me the most. I felt completely alone, and I’m ashamed to say I became wary of stating my position beyond saying that I didn’t want hunting on my own land.

I had come across this poem, which I now know was written by Marilou Awiaka, around the same time as I read Awi Usdi’s myth, sometime late in the summer of 93. Today I also see the amazing synchronicity, but that day I was just desperate. Earlier that morning men with a van full of dogs had treed a bear just up the hill from me in the woods, and were closing in for the kill. Feeling such terrible grief, the words just spilled out of my mouth almost unconsciously in mantra-like repetition … “From out of the mountain you come … ” I repeated in utter desperation, choking on the poem turned song, and with tears running down my face. Suddenly the noise ceased. I listened for the fatal gunshots with a racing heart. No howling dogs. Not one sound, just silence. What could have happened? I crept through the trees to the edge of my property. I crouched at the edge of the woods road that the truck must have used, and waited, hidden behind some thick brush. When the van rattled down the mountain without a bear and full of quiet dogs, I felt incredible gratitude welling up inside me. Grace had intervened. I don’t remember when it actually occurred to me that singing the song might have helped.

My doubting mind kept me in terrible conflict after I had made the possible connection between my involuntary intention to prevent a bear killing by singing the song and the fact that no bear had been shot. However, I kept on singing … if he came once, he could come again. I was starting to believe it. I also began calling the deer to come to visit me when their killing time was passed. I hoped to be able to feed them over the winter, so my little song became an invitation too.

That year they arrived on the night of the Winter Solstice. I was in the middle of celebrating my ritual (which included Awi Usdi’s song) when I had an overpowering impression that deer were outside my window. Hugging the wall so I wouldn’t startle them, I moved to the window. There he was, standing about ten feet away, munching on the deer grain that I had just started to leave for them. “Awi Usdi, you came!” I breathed the words into the still room like a prayer. I was flooded with awe, and my skin prickled uncomfortably. My ears were ringing. He had an eight-point rack of antlers and a torn left ear, and he was staring in at me with luminous black eyes. How long I stood in that visceral and shining embrace I’ll never know. Later, when we broke eye contact, I saw that he had brought six other deer with him. He came all that winter. During this period of my life I never was able to escape the belief that this one buck whom I continued to call Awi Usdi was the little white chief of the deer. …

A pattern developed out of this first experience which I continue to follow each fall, and which always begins with me invoking the Spirit of Awi Usdi to assist the animals during the killing times. Last year when I came to this cabin and met Jeff the logger/hunter, I immediately began to sing the song. I could feel the danger pulsing in my body long before he ever remarked that he got high just knowing he could kill them (the deer). I will always wonder if the reason this man did not manage to shoot a deer on this property last November was because of my singing prayer. Since I already had learned that focusing psychic energy on the safety of an animal can also bring in the animals themselves, I knew that the deer would come to visit me when it was safe to do so, and they did.

This year I began in September by singing the song every time I walked in the woods where we often saw deer gliding and leaping through the holes opened up by butchering the trees. I hoped as usual to invoke the spirit of Awi Usdi to protect all the animals. At the same time I was also inviting the deer to visit the feeding place I had created for them out behind the house last year, but only when it was safe. On the Fall Equinox I left them a deer block for a present. I knew the deer would probably be moving around a lot over the next few weeks because mating season is coming up in November and I thought they might like a treat. If the block wasn’t demolished by November 1st, I planned to take it in. (One of the most disgusting things about human hunters is that even their guns don’t seem to be enough of an edge over the hapless creatures they pursue. For each species that they slaughter they wait until the animals are at their most vulnerable. Animals have only one “season” to reproduce, and all hunters take advantage of it, marking the season of each animal as the one in which to kill them. They call this sportsmanship.)

On the night of September 28th, Star and I were walking in the woods at dusk when Star alerted me to human presence with her peculiar low growl, which she reserves just for people. Jeff’s sudden appearance, followed by his aggressive verbal assault, cut like a knife, shattering the stillness of an autumn dusk turned night. It never occurred to me during his raging tirade that he was hunting illegally in the dark with a bow gun. I was too terrified to think. Because I already knew this man was dangerous, I tried to feign nonchalance and kept my mouth shut. The cruel irony of catching this man at some illegal hunting activity that involved killing deer was lost on me until after he “escorted” me back to the cabin.

The moment I could think again, I gathered up some deer hair that I had saved from last winter and with corn meal created a small circle in a dish. Next I squared the four directions within the circle, and put deer hair in the center along with a tiny bear fetish. Then I placed the dish on the north window in my bedroom that looks towards the woods. When I feel particularly desperate, I find that creating some kind of living prayer is helpful, especially when I am unable to stay focused on the intention behind the prayer myself.

The next morning I was writing in my journal, and felt a presence nearby. Looking up, I was startled. Just outside my north window stood two deer looking in at me! They were just a few feet away. Joy surged through me at this most unexpected visit. I felt like they had come in response both to my prayer and to the terrifying threats uttered by a madman to us the night before. There was no other possible explanation for these two deer to be gazing in at me through my bedroom window as far as I was concerned. Just having them so near brought me closer to returning to my own body, which I involuntarily desert whenever the stress and fear are too high.

This morning when three of them appeared on the knoll to munch at the rapidly disappearing deer block, I felt a deep gratitude stealing over me. I don’t know whether or not I’ll be around here this winter to feed them, but this relationship between the deer and me will continue, no matter where I am. The Awi Usdi song binds us irrevocably to one another—the deer and myself—through space/time with a tie that is more mysterious than any other I’ve known. “From out of the mountain he comes,” bringing reverence and justice in his wake. I’m waiting for him now.

Note: Sara Wright is a graduate student at Goddard College. (Many thanks to her advisor, Lise Weil, for urging her to send work to She Is Still Burning.) The following excerpts are from a letter Sara Wright wrote to She Is Still Burning in December, 2000: “I am a writer, and a naturalist who makes her home in the western mountains of Maine. I live with my dog Morning Star, my rabbit Moonflower, and two doves in a little cabin at the edge of the forest. … In my writing I am exploring the psychic edge between woman and nature. In this process I am discovering that the boundary between the two is remarkably fluid.

As an ecofeminist and a woman I believe that a willingness to explore these borderlands provides women with a way to heal themselves and the planet. Exploring the wilderness within my body through my dreams, and the wilderness without through my observations in nature, has helped me become an advocate for both myself and all life.
In my opinion it is difficult to develop a relationship with self/nature and not reach the conclusion that I have: namely, that mindless killing for recreation/sport is wrong. For years I have struggled with the despair that comes with feeling helpless in the face of animal slaughter. … ‘The Light of the Deer’ is the story of how I discovered that psychic activism really works!”

A WING IN THE CREVICE

Pale pale sun sifted from an invisible sky
its pallid weight shrinking trunks,
putting their sturdiness in question.
No sign of flame to pierce the eyelid
no root to trip over, waking ancient dreams
pressed in cliffs the short-tailed
albatross widens its feet on.

The near-extinct bird flies months
without solid touch, coming to nest
solely on this rough black rock
fierced with storms only a lover
would take years charting cross then climb,
to inhale that pink of its beak.

On land far away in the pressure-stilled sun,
the dream flings out a terrible
lonely harsh light.
Shuddering shoulders.
Breaking open an encrusted lung.
Air! Young flame and feather,
the albatross wings out to transform grief.

— Ann Stokes

A Week of Syn-Crone-Icity “SHE IS STILL BURNING” MEETS “RADVICTORIAN RADIO”

With alarum bells ringing all over the globe at the ascension of Bush (“our Cowboy Caligula on the Throne of Terminal Rome,” as Barbara Mor puts it), my e-mail in-box was exploding with messages. And in the midst of several startling and fast-paced synchronicities, I received finally the full address for Barbara Mor’s new website, “RadVictorian Radio.”

“RadVictorian Radio” is visually beautiful and, writerly speaking, the most imaginative use of the medium that I’ve seen. I happily plunged into Installment I of the adventures of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Matilda Joselyn Gage, reincarnated respectively as a beatnik poet and an L.A. waitress, with the mission of bringing “19th c. radical feminist agendas into 21st c. brains.” Then I broke off reading to write a rave e-mail to Barbara and send her all the back installments of She Is Still Burning. And received a day later the reply below. Her letters are such a wild infusion of energy-and-ideas that it seemed a shame to keep this one to myself.

Dear Harriet, thank you so much for sending BURNING, She Is Still Burning indeed. It is true that extreme challenge by the BushWorld fundamentalists will activate many who assumed the Worst was over. But so many of us Olde War Horses are also tired, and what does it require to rouse us one more time? Hey, maybe this is it, the Electronic Ullulation. i don’t know if that is spelled right, but does Xenna care??!! I’ve copied out the wonderful Jane Picard piece to read as I read – slowly. Yes, many tremendous lines. That you are receiving such quality response just out of the gate, really impressive! And a good idea; distribution is the obstacle to all publishing. Finally, a free gift, and it is a beautiful gift to all of us, as well as to yourself. Your writing is very moving, Harriet, never doubt it. I spew out clever lines like this, not “writing” (which traumas me into silence normally) but just “blowing” – are you watching the american PBS Ken Burns series on JAZZ? My mother was a Charleston dancer in the 20s, and played piano in a Pittsburgh jazzband briefly, so she raised me on the piano bench. I was never very good, but music was her gift to me (she died when I was 12, and it was indeed this gift that kept me going) – so very young I was going on the bus at night to downtown San Diego to see travelling Jazz at the Phil concerts, was a FREAK thru cool jazz and bebop and MJQ periods. Anyway, watching this Ken Burns series is making me cry, in memory of all this, memory of social change occurring mightily via MUSIC and the heroic lives of the musicians (they gave their lives literally, many of them). SO, blubbering away, I am thinking: What HAPPENED to feminism, which began in this spirit and then just dribbled away, morphed into — real gains, I know; I’m sure Hillary Clinton feels empowered! But that origynal spirit … people hate to say it outright, but the great utterances come up from under, and women who have “made it” – Hillary, Oprah, whomever – do not have that powerful SWING, what I mean: Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, Anita O’Day, they growled, and roared, and wept blood, incarnadine sweat. So, in this Spirit, WE BEGIN AGAIN! swinging my ax arthritically … well, i want to tell you that I have a hard time sustaining any work, even a website, because i’ve been “rejected, boohoo!” so often I think what’s the use. But, knowing you are there putting yourself into “Burning”, this inspires – no, kicks my butt into KNOWING I have to get up and join the fight with no excuses. SO, thanks, I need that! And, please use anything I send in e-mail that works, it is my version of jazz improvisation, letters that is – a few good lines spew out because I’m not thinking: This is my real work! Writing, in other words, scares me. Standing in the street screaming and ranting like the baglady of Babylon, this doesn’t scare me. Ergo, that’s what letters and e-mail are for me. Things ARE moving so fast; California’s energy deregulations, behind the current disasters of blackouts and utilities bankruptcies, are said to have been begun by the utilities selling their energy sources to – ehem, heehaw, some TEXAS oil companies. Which are in turn demanding hijack wholesale prices which California’s utilities can’t afford without raising users’ energy rates skyhigh. Well, the usual demonic tangle of instigators and instigated, except imagine George Bush’s week: stop international abortion/reproductive rights funding, give the finger to feminists and enviros, go to bed and wake up King of the World, and – best of all – being a Texan suckering the elitist state of California. Big oil! wins again. And again. And again.